A 16 Year Old Hacked Apple and Stole 90GB Data

1 min

An Australian student of only 16, whose name remains anonymous, has pleaded guilty to ‘hacking’ one of Apple’s servers, allowing him access to a secure network where it downloaded just over 90GB in files classified as “safe”.

The information is scarce because according to the teenager’s lawyer, he belongs to a group of hackers and publishing information related to his actions would put him at risk not only him but also his family.

The technology giant is silent on the hacked Apple matter, as usual, not answering that how it is possible that a teen intruded in their strongly protected servers. The state prosecutor also acknowledged that the company is “very sensitive about publicity”.

According to the public details of the case, this young man developed several backdoors that allowed him access to one of the servers of Apple, but it is not detailed to which part of the infrastructure.

This access would have been carried out during a whole year and not only would have downloaded “safe files”, but also “authorization keys” that allow knowing the credentials for the logins of some users.

Before this access, Apple would have detected the intrusion despite the fact that the young man would have used “computerized tunnels” and VPNs to hide his identity. Apple denounced the fact to the FBI, who initiated an investigation lead them to find IPs in Melbourne, for which the Federal Police of Australia (AFP) was notified, transforming the case into an international investigation.

The security department of the company registered two serial numbers of two MacBooks used in hacked Apple scenario, which together with IP addresses, served to find the house and thus execute a search warrant by the AFP.

They seized the two laptops, whose serial numbers matched those registered by Apple, a mobile phone, and a hard drive, where they found a folder with the name “hacky hack hack”, which contained the files owned by Apple and other documents related to other attacks on other companies.

The young man pleaded guilty to unauthorized access and theft of files and will be sentenced during the month of September. According to his lawyer, the teenager was a fan of the company and “dreamed” of working for Apple.